In the News

Justin Schack
Managing Director/Partner at Rosenblatt Securities I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how intense the debate is getting over potential equity-market-structure reforms, as big banks and brokers, with support from many buy-side firms and upstart exchange IEX, line up against the big three exchange groups. And I think some historical perspective is essential to understanding what’s going on right now and what should be done, if anything, to modernize market structure.

Rosenblatt Securities is pleased to announce its role as an advisor to GTS, a leading electronic market maker across global financial instruments and the largest designated market maker (DMM) at the New York Stock Exchange, on its acquisition of the ETF and wholesale market making business of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Rosenblatt Securities is pleased to announce that it has formed an Investment Banking Advisory Board. Comprised of a distinguished group of financial-technology and capital-markets industry leaders, the Advisory Board will help Rosenblatt’s well-respected banking team stay on top of cutting-edge industry developments, expand its network and source transactions.

A failed experiment to help small-company stocks will be buried at September’s end, the Securities and Exchange Commission said on Monday. The Tick Size Pilot Program was supposed to revitalize trading liquidity, stock offerings, and job creation for small-cap public companies–by quoting and trading their stocks in increments of a nickel, rather than the usual penny.

In the past decade, discussion around dark pools evolved from an obscure market-structure issue to a highly-charged debate over whether traders armed with computer algorithms were using the private venues to take advantage of investors with slower price feeds. The fight gained traction in 2014 after the release of Michael Lewis’s book "Flash Boys.”

The European Union’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, or MiFID II, was introduced in January with the aim of pushing more trading onto regulated public exchanges where prices and participants can be seen by all. At first glance, it seems to have failed its biggest test. The share of trading on so-called lit exchanges — where prices and trades are clearly visible — has barely risen in the first months of the new regime.

 In the news Archive

Justin Schack
Managing Director/Partner at Rosenblatt Securities I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how intense the debate is getting over potential equity-market-structure reforms, as big banks and brokers, with support from many buy-side firms and upstart exchange IEX, line up against the big three exchange groups. And I think some historical perspective is essential to understanding what’s going on right now and what should be done, if anything, to modernize market structure.

Rosenblatt Securities is pleased to announce its role as an advisor to GTS, a leading electronic market maker across global financial instruments and the largest designated market maker (DMM) at the New York Stock Exchange, on its acquisition of the ETF and wholesale market making business of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Rosenblatt Securities is pleased to announce that it has formed an Investment Banking Advisory Board. Comprised of a distinguished group of financial-technology and capital-markets industry leaders, the Advisory Board will help Rosenblatt’s well-respected banking team stay on top of cutting-edge industry developments, expand its network and source transactions.

A failed experiment to help small-company stocks will be buried at September’s end, the Securities and Exchange Commission said on Monday. The Tick Size Pilot Program was supposed to revitalize trading liquidity, stock offerings, and job creation for small-cap public companies–by quoting and trading their stocks in increments of a nickel, rather than the usual penny.

In the past decade, discussion around dark pools evolved from an obscure market-structure issue to a highly-charged debate over whether traders armed with computer algorithms were using the private venues to take advantage of investors with slower price feeds. The fight gained traction in 2014 after the release of Michael Lewis’s book "Flash Boys.”

The European Union’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, or MiFID II, was introduced in January with the aim of pushing more trading onto regulated public exchanges where prices and participants can be seen by all. At first glance, it seems to have failed its biggest test. The share of trading on so-called lit exchanges — where prices and trades are clearly visible — has barely risen in the first months of the new regime.

Working in an industry where you are one of very few women can be challenging enough — but imagine what it's like to be the only woman on staff. That's the case for New York Stock Exchange trader Lauren Simmons. The 23-year-old is an equity trader for Rosenblatt Securities, and she is both the youngest and the only full-time female employee to hold that position at the NYSE.

The New York Stock Exchange trading floor is one of the most familiar symbols of American business. But in 2018, the arena that prides itself on predicting the future is stuck in the past in one respect - it's almost entirely staffed by men. Enter Lauren Simmons, the only full-time female broker on the New York Stock Exchange floor, as well as the only African-American woman, and at 23, the youngest. She told the BBC's Joe Miller what it's like to work in the male-dominated maelstrom.

Rosenblatt Securities is pleased to announce its role as the exclusivefinancial advisor to Visible Alpha, a company that is transforming the way investment managers and brokerscollaborate on research, financial models and corporate access, on a $38 million investment by a consortiumof leading financial institutions. The funding round was led by Goldman Sachs, with additional participationfrom Exane BNP Paribas, Macquarie Group, RBC Capital Markets, Banco Santander through its VC arm,Santander InnoVentures, and Wells Fargo as well as Visible Alpha’s existing investors, Bank of America, Citi,Jefferies, Morgan Stanley and UBS. Visible Alpha has seen dramatic growth over the past year and will continueto build on this momentum through the product development and global expansion enabled by this funding.

In honor of International Women’s day, and emerging technologies that can have an impact on fintech, we would like to highlight three women who are doing fascinating things in the world of blockchain. Meltem Demirors - VP at Digital Currency Group and member of WEF Blockchain Council: At Rosenblatt’s 9thAnnual Financial Technologies Summit, Meltem Demirors, formerly of Digital Currency Group, energized the crowd with her keynote presentation titled, “The Blockchain Hype Cycle – Past, Present, Future.” Additionally, we would like to commend Meltem for her inspiring Women in Blockchain – Leaders Series. Click here to read about the talented women Meltem has written about.

Trading in hundreds of European stocks may be disrupted when the region’s regulator starts restricting transaction volumes from mid-March, in what could be a more sweeping crackdown than anticipated. “This is one of the biggest changes under MiFID II,” said Richard Semark, head of UBS Group AG’s multilateral-trading facility. “It will alter trader behavior as suspended stocks move to alternative venues.” He says that even more stocks may be suspended now if January and February data are taken into account as well as the 2017 period.

Major exchange operators across Europe have urged EU financial authorities to ensure systematic internalisers (SIs) under MiFID II are subject to the tick size regime. In November, the European Securities Markets Authority (ESMA) proposed enforcing the tick size rules to the SI regime in a bid to level the playing field for trading on-exchange. It stated a competitive disadvantage would be created for trading venues if only on-venue orders and quotes have to comply with the minimum tick size regime, resulting in volumes currently traded on-exchange migrating towards over the counter (OTC) execution.

ew York, NY, January 19, 2018. Rosenblatt Securities is pleased to announce that the participants in the National Market System Plan to establish a wider tick-size pilot in the US equity market have selected Rosenblatt to provide the official assessment of the pilot. ‍ The tick-size pilot grew out of concern among some market participants and government officials that the 2001 decimalization of US price quotations adversely affected market quality for emerging-growth and other small company stocks, with attendant effects on the US and global economies. Decimalization established the minimum quoting increment at one penny, after many years of it being 12.5 cents, or 1/8 of a dollar.

First came dark pools, private trading venues that challenged old-school stock exchanges. Now something else lingers in the shadows of Wall Street: ping pools. They also operate outside traditional stock exchanges, but these venues, which are gaining users in changing markets, are more opaque for the public. Running them allows some of the fastest, savviest electronic traders to dodge exchange fees and reap plum opportunities.

The 19th century newspaper editor Horace Greeley urged young Americans to “Go West” to the unsettled frontier. When he went himself, the trip from Chicago to the Pacific took two-and-a-half months by steamboat and ox-drawn wagon. He later advocated a transcontinental railroad to speed up commerce and shorten the mail service to 10 days. Wall Street’s fastest trading firms are invoking the spirit of Greeley as they build Go West, a trail of wireless towers, fibre-optic lines and submarine cables linking Chicago, the Pacific coast and Tokyo. Transmitting market data end to end will take fractions of a second for traders seeking topreserve an edge.

Market makers and the trading desks of major banks are hoping volatility can surge back into the markets in the new year, but there is little agreement over whether that will happen. For much of the year, equity markets have steadily climbed with few dips, suppressing trading activity and volatility. So far in 2017, the Cboe Volatility Index, a measure of implied volatility, has posted the lowest average daily close in a single year since at least 1990, according to the exchange operator’s historical data. "It's been a pretty painful period for the industry," Justin Schack, a managing director and partner with research and brokerage company Rosenblatt Securities, said in an interview.

Since 20 October 2014 launch of the original Turquoise Block Discovery service to the end of November 2017, investors successfully matched €58 billion via Turquoise Plato Block Discovery™ of which €54 billion or more than 92.5% matched since the September 2016 cooperation agreement with Plato. How do you think MiFID II will impact block-trading volumes in Europe?

For fixed-income securities, SIs will allow banks to continue offering liquidity directly to clients in largely the same way they do today, says Anish Puaar at Rosenblatt Securities Inc. But it’s a different story for equities, he says, because SIs must compete with exchanges and other trading venues for market flow. “SIs have advantages over other types of venue in how they can price and tailor liquidity to suit client needs,” said Puaar, Rosenblatt’s European market structure analyst in London. “These benefits could see bank-run SIs gain significant market share in the next 12 to 18 months.”

Rosenblatt Securities is pleased to announce that the firm and its head of fintech investment banking, Vikas Shah, have been selected as part of the prestigious Institutional Investor Fintech Finance 40 ranking for 2017.

A sweeping European market-reform initiative was poised to disrupt U.S. brokers' equity research businesses until Wall Street's chief regulator entered the fray. Europe's revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, or MiFID II, was designed to level the playing field among financial services companies through a myriad of regulatory changes, most prominently the separation of research costs from trading execution costs.

Europe’s biggest exchange operators are seeking new chief executives that will be at the helm of their companies as Brexit unfolds. London Stock Exchange Group CEO Xavier Rolet is departing after leading the company for eight years, while Deutsche Boerse boss Carsten Kengeter is leaving after being dogged by insider trading allegations.

The stock exchanges that once cheered the promise of increased transparency from Europe’s new financial rulebook are now complaining. Under the MiFID II regulatory overhaul, trading venues run by high-speed trading firms and banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will get more flexibility in how they price stocks, potentially allowing them to win a larger share of Europe’s $15 trillion equity market, say critics. Bank trading venues will be allowed to quote prices in smaller increments, or “tick sizes,” than the exchanges can.

“When your crystal ball gets foggy, your two greatest assets will be your humility and your flexibility.” In this video from MarketsWiki Education’s World of Opportunity event in New York, Richard Rosenblatt, CEO of Rosenblatt Securities, explains how to choose a career that has a solid future. Rosenblatt considers himself an institutional execution expert, but when the market crashed in ‘87, he had to get creative. At the end of the day, you have to follow your smile and do what you enjoy. The person that loves what they do will win every time.

MiFID rules capping dark-pool trading will affect funds: study Limits impacted 94% of FTSE 100 stocks, Rosenblatt found If fund managers want to keep trading in European dark pools, they will need a big overhaul of their practices before new rules kick in next year. The MiFID II rules that come into force in January intend to cap trading on dark pools, with the intention of forcing more trading onto public, or lit, exchanges. An analysis by Rosenblatt Securities Inc. found that 74 percent of the continent’s biggest stocks would have breached the caps over a year-long study period. In the U.K.’s FTSE 100 Index, 94 percent of stocks triggered the caps.

New York, NY, June 21, 2017. Rosenblatt Securities is pleased to announce it has hired veteran financial-services-industry analyst Christopher Allen. In nearly two decades as a securities analyst, Allen has developed a devoted following among investors in financial-services stocks, particularly those of global exchange operators such as CBOE Holdings, CME Group, IntercontinentalExchange and Nasdaq. He also has analyzed related companies in equity brokerage and market making, including TD Ameritrade, E*Trade Financial, Charles Schwab & Co., Interactive Brokers, ITG, KCG Holdings and Virtu Financial.

Rosenblatt Securities is pleased to announce its role as the financial advisor to Euronext N.V. (ENXTPA:ENX) on its agreement to acquire FastMatch, Inc., the fastest growing ECN in the spot foreign exchange market. Euronext is acquiring approximately 90% of FastMatch for $153 million initial cash consideration in addition to a contingent earnout payment of $10 million.

Sellside Profile : Joe Gawronski : Rosenblatt Securities
Posted by: Best Execution , April 22, 2017
STEADY AS SHE GOES?
Joe Gawronski, President and Chief Operating Officer of Rosenblatt Securities talks to Best Execution’s Lynn Strongin Dodds about the path of regulatory change, both in the US and Europe, and whether there is a risk of divergence.

Rosenblatt Securities is pleased to announce it has hired veteran semiconductor-industry analyst Hans Mosesmann. An electrical engineer who spent a decade working at chipmakers Texas Instruments and Advanced Micro Devices before moving to Wall Street in 1996, Mosesmann is known and respected for his coverage of such companies as AMD, Intel, Micron Technologies and Nvidia.

Thesys Technologies LLC, the technology arm of Tradeworx, Inc, announced today that it has been selected to build a powerful new system to manage the tracking and auditing of all stocks and transactions by the Securities and Exchange Commission.